Food, Virtue Signalling, and Narcissistic Supply

Recently, there has been some foofarah over the President’s food preferences. Namely, he likes his steaks well done and slathered in ketchup. The horror! The utter, unmitigated gall of a man to order food the way he likes it!

You know, it’s funny. My father still orders his steaks well done, and I’ve never quite understood why. Medium rare to medium has always struck me as the best balanced steak. I really don’t care for a bloody mess on a plate, so rare and blue rare are right out. If I wanted that, I’d just go to the Serengeti, chuck a spear at some wild animal, and eat the flesh raw. But well done, indeed, cooks out much of the flavor. So, yeah. Balance. But what business is it of mine to harp on a man for what he likes to eat? It is enough that I’ve my own preferences, and another man has his.

Food virtue signalling, or more aptly, food snobbery has been a thing for a very long time. And like political virtue signalling, it is all about display one’s superiority over another based on some irrelevant metric. “Look at me,” says the narcissist, “I’m superior because I like my steak rare.”

Of course, it is not merely steak that has suffered this effect. Wine has traditionally been a strong bastion of snobbery, but the practice has moved to craft beer. Now, again, don’t get me wrong, I like craft beer. For the longest time, I thought I didn’t like beer, because I found Bud, Coors, and Miller Lite to be foul-tasting beverage abominations. But therein lies the point: I found them foul. Another man might like them. Indeed, even today these beers sell like hotcakes. Obviously somebody likes them.

If the President wants a Bud Lite, get him a damned Bud Lite. And just because you drink Dogfish Head 90 minute IPA (which I also find foul, by the way, as it’s a totally overrated beer in my opinion) doesn’t mean you are a better man, or have a more “elevated” palate, or anything of the sort. Here’s a great video about the irritating nature of the new craft beer snob types that have been popping up in trendy bars around the country:

Some years back, I remember reading about a blind taste test of wines, and a number of Napa valley California wines beating out French wines among the French. Naturally, the French were angry about this. You can’t virtue signal your superiority if you’re just rating what tastes good. Or, put in simpler terms, the French taste testers couldn’t cheat and give their own a leg up.

There’s this thought today that, like correctness in politics, there is correctness in food and drink. There is an Overton Window for acceptable steak. There are some steak places I’ve been to where ordering a medium steak gets me a dirty look from the server. As if to say “how dare you order cooked food from our establishment.” Given that Donald Trump likes his steak well done, I’m sure he’s dealt with much worse over the years.

Folks act like Donald Trump is afraid to try new things, afraid to eat superior food, or some such. It’s lunacy. More than likely, he’s tried his steak other ways in the past, and just likes what he likes. After all, if you like your steak rare for whatever reason, you’ll deal with a lot less dirty looks and peer pressure. Just like, it should be noted, that if you like your politics Leftist, again, you will deal with a lot less hate for it.

Rare has been deemed by the nameless food correctness authorities to be the *perfect* steak. Anything else is wrongthink.

This is past the point of ridiculousness. Not only must your politics be perfectly correct, according to some nameless, faceless, cultural authority, but your food and beverage choices must be also. Or else, as some outlets have implied, you are not qualified to be President.

I wonder, however, if the people who push such narratives of correctness even believe any of their own bullshit. Do people really prefer their steaks rare in such mass numbers? Or are a healthy percentage of them doing it because the snooty server at the fancy steak place will give you a dirty look if you order anything else?

How many craft beer snobs drink the beer for taste, and how many drink it because it’s trendy? I suspect a great many folks do this out of trendiness. When I went to Germany some years back, I noticed that some of my favorite German beers were incredibly cheap there. I filled up on beer, let me tell you. I remember walking through the aisle of a kiosk store there, and seeing bottled water selling for a higher price than some of the best beers in the world (again, in my opinion). Amusingly enough, German purity laws regarding beer probably meant the water in the beer was probably of better quality than the actual bottled water. But never mind that. I had a great time at the breweries and such.

But one thing that stood out to me was how normally the Germans regarded their beers.To them, this was just how beer was. If you wanted one, you drank one. People weren’t sitting around sniffing their glasses, or some theatrical bullshit like you see sometimes in American craft beer bars.

If you like your beer, you can drink your beer.

It was that way in America, once too. Sure, our beers were probably crappier in those days, but I do miss the idea that if you liked a certain kind of beer, nobody cared. I wonder if steaks were once that way too. Wines, of course, probably weren’t, but we can blame the French for that. Though if you read your Bible, you’ll notice how wine didn’t seem to be a big deal in Christ’s day. Certainly the Messiah didn’t see the need to sniff the cork and aerate the wine before doing whatever with it.

Most of this is just theatrics. Maybe more folks like their steak one way as opposed to another, and maybe more folks like this beer over that beer. But it’s not about that anymore. It’s about putting on airs of self-righteous indignation every time someone does something differently with their food and drink. It’s about saying “I’m better than you.”

For a bunch of Leftists who once tried to ride the wave of prole resentment into Communism, it’s something of an irony. Their behavior has much more in common with aristocratic disdain for the peasantry than any sort of “workers of the world unite” bullshit.

Apparently, you can have infinite number of genders, my friends, but you must order your steak only one way.

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72 Comments

I grew up on well done, and have migrated to medium and medium-rare — over time. Rare isn’t to my liking. Well done is familiar, but not my preference. I know this is one of those culinary arguments which never solves itself. The militancy of some rare fans leaves me scratching my head. Okay, fine, good for you. I happen to like a bit of brown, beneath my sear. And some pink beneath the brown. Am I a heathen? Do I care? (laughter) You know our political arguments have gotten truly strange, when people attack the President for his steaks. 🙂

Sometimes it’s hard to ascertain any legitimate connection they’re trying to make. I think the ketchup thing was along the lines of, “He eats like a child; we knew he was childish!” but it came off as really petty (I actually giggled when I saw it because I was sure it was an Onion article)

Being a politican seems to come with all levels of scrutiny and background analysis; it’s not for the faint of heart. I couldn’t do it.

I happen to like completely raw (when I was a kid and had serious digestive issues way back in prehistory it was thought that rare meat – well, mother would have said half done – was easier to digest than well done, so I was given most meat half done and developed a preference, and at some point found out that not cooked at all tasted even better to me), but eating totally uncooked is a bit frowned on too. And there would be good reasons to frown, although I suppose with most it’s just because “it’s not done” rather than thinking about food safety. Well done is safest, at least when talking about germs. I think seared black is supposed to have some health issues, but then you can get that no matter how the steak has been done.

Most of us probably like best what we got used to eating in childhood, even if we can acquire new favorites with age. I remember seeing the claim that people who haven’t gotten used to chocolate as children often don’t like it if they first taste it as adults (heresy!!!). There is no The Best which would fit everybody.

I may be an outlier there, as I got used to well done steak as a kid, since my father liked it that way (and still does). But I moved to medium-rare/medium as I got older. However, I found rare unpalatable, so that’s as far as I went.

“Or are a healthy percentage of them doing it because the snooty server at the fancy steak place will give you a dirty look if you order anything else?”

I eat how I want. If the server doesn’t like it or throws me shade, I don’t return to their establishment, and usually give them a little blast on Yelp.

“People weren’t sitting around sniffing their glasses, or some theatrical bullshit like you see sometimes in American craft beer bars.”

I’ve never been a great wine taster, although I do love wine. I can suffice with a 4.97 bottle of Barefoot. Still, I’ve heard there’s an extended ritual for people who are into it—uncork, let it breathe, sniff the cork, pour, savor the aroma, pair it with certain foods, smell coffee grounds to cleanse the palette, and so forth.

“Rare has been deemed by the nameless food correctness authorities to be the *perfect* steak. Anything else is wrongthink.”

Yikes. I would argue that rare is playing fast and loose with your food. E. Coli? No thanks. I’ll only risk raw meat on my sushi.

Holding the wine glass by the stem, I get that now; I guess for chilled stuff like white wines it keeps it cooler if you’re not cupping the glass (the heat from your palms). However, now tumbler glasses are all the rage.

*snicker* When I transferred between two assignments in Europe, I treated myself to a long road trip through Italy, Germany and France. Stopped in a little place on the Mosel, called Cochem-am-Mosel; charming place, has a fairy-tail castle in the middle of town, and vinyards all around. I went wine-tasting in town, and they poured the samples into plain old glass tumblers, And generous with the samples, too. By the time I had sampled three or four, they tasted great to me. I think I bought six bottles of local white to take with.
But plain old glass tumblers … the professional wine snobs are probably having several cows at that thought.

My father certainly likes his steak well done. We act like this is just a taste preference but really it’s food safety. Same with all those cooked vegetables that happened to be grown with manure for fertilizer. Cooking kills pathogens. You can eat more food if you cook it well. We’re wealthy and if we forget a piece of meat in the fridge for a few too many days we can toss the poor thing out, swear a few times, and go buy more. But if you grew up with well done beef, you’re likely to think that it tastes “right”.

I like mine warmed through but rare. Beef is good, so long as you sear the cut surfaces the interior is probably safe. What I’ve discovered that I don’t care for is “aged” beef. Makes me think of that slightly brown hamburger I threw away. I’d probably like aged beef done a little more than the beef that is still moo’ing at me.

Similar things can be said about wine snobs. I have a special guffaw in me for wine snobs, because they so often fulsomely praise wines that really, truly, actually fight being swallowed: they’re so astringent and acidic that the throat struggles to reject them. (If you’ve ever seen a bunch of wine snobs at a wine tasting, of the sniffing, staring, swirling, delicate sip, and the spitting-out, that last part is the only bit that was sincere.)

I prefer my beverages to be pleasurable rather than a trial-by-combat of the power of my throat muscles. But then, I’ve never been approached to write for Wine Snobs’ World.

Yeah, I never got the spitting out part. I mean, isn’t the point of the event to drink some wine? But you’re right, they often choose the most difficult to drink wines as the best, as if it’s a members-only exclusive club to be able to consume beverages that make you want to throw up.

I mean, I understand acquired taste and all, but that’s just a little much.

What the leftist snobs seem to miss is the Donald is not there for the steak. The Donald is one of those rare Ketchup connoiseurs. That’s why he has the steak well done. Now about these craft beers. Mr. Nobody says Belgian Ale is better than all of them. Personally I prefer a Hobbitish light or a good Dwarven stout but that’s just me. Fortunately I live in an area were people just drink beer an don’t put on airs about it. Great video by the way.

Someone should try bullshitting a beer snob with something like that. “Have you tried the exquisite and trendy Tolkien Hobbitish Light Ale, or the darker Dwarven Stout?” It would be funny if they felt compelled to spin a web of lies about it.

As for my preferred beer, I find that Radeberger is my standby. Just a nice, light pilsner without a lot of fuss. Though if I’m cheap, Yuengling is always cheap and pretty good. It ain’t crafty, or fancy, but it gets the job done.

Never was much of a drinker. All beer sucked as far as I was concerned,though I did try several. Only wine I ever tried was Boonesfarm Strawberry Hill. Awful. Was never desperate enough to try Mad Dog 20/20 or Thunderbird. Preferred whiskey. I was however a connoiseur of agriculture. Preferred the southern Mexican or Cambodian to the others. If Hobbitish or Dwarven actually existed I would be sorely tempted to give them a try.

I actually have tried homemade apple wine (awful) and pistachio wine (not bad) just because I visited a giant pistachio farm in New Mexico. Not the taste we’re used to, but not awful. I could get used to it.

My first taste of beer I was about eight or so. My dad let me try some of his Stroh’s. I remember it as bitter. Which is probably why I never got to liking beer.
Your suggestion for trolling beer snobs is hilarious but I don’t think I could do it with a straight face. Would love to see video of it though. Would probably go viral on You Tube.

I grew up on well done steaks as well. Both my parents and both sets of grandparents typically cooked their steaks like this too. My lady’s the same way – her parents and grandparents did that too.

I think it’s a Boomer-kids of the Greatest Generation thing. We were talking about that – why the older Boomers ate all their food “burnt” – and we came up with the state of food. The old school Boomer kids were raised by Depression era folks, who probably had to make sure the food was thoroughly cooked before eating it.

As always, the Left ignores any modicum of thought to parlay into rote snobbery.

Agreed. They’ve ruined kale too – along with cheese, chocolate, stout brews. I like where you discuss the craft beer – I generally like that stuff over the swill pushed on the American market, but these guys make me want to stick to Old Milwaukee.

I’ve tried various world chocolates and for my money Hershey still beats them all. It’s all just anti- American/Western snobbery. Of course when the time comes they’ll be screaming for us to save their asses from those who would be happy to take their heads.

In Italy I fell in love with a Lambrusco table wine at a nearby restaurant. Room temp, kinda purplish, and thick as soup – and all you can drink! I think they mixed it up in the back room with a canoe paddle and pickle buckets. The heart wants what the heart wants.

I also can vouch for the fact that people who went through the Great Depression like their food to be really, Really, REALLY cooked. It’s an inside joke in our extended family.

My maternal Grandfather would swirl all the food on his supper plate together, and then mash the resulting sludge with his fork until it had the consistency of warm guacamole, before eating a single bite. When queried about this procedure, he would state: “It all goes together in your stomach anyway.”

And… I was that kid who couldn’t abide the roast beef on his plate coming into contact with the green beans. Granddad loved me anyway.

Yeah, there was definitely that too. On top of it, my grandma was Greek – so everything had to be recooked in the frying pan or into the soup pot. The microwave was basically for reheating coffee or cakes. (And they kept the old Montgomery Ward Radiation King Microwave at that. Thing lasted for 40 years and weighed about 30 pounds…)

5% is a low ABV. That’s session beer low. A Strong Bitter is usually 6-7% ABV.

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jic
on October 20, 2017 at 2:39 pm

The fact that stronger beers are available doesn’t make 5% ABV low. By your logic, I could use the fact that you can buy 2% beer to claim that 5% is extremely high. The vast majority of beers are somewhere between 3.5% and 5.5% ABV

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everlastingphelps
on October 20, 2017 at 8:45 pm

The vast majority of beers are low abv.

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jic
on October 20, 2017 at 9:20 pm

The vast majority of beers are average AVB, almost by definition.

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everlastingphelps
on October 21, 2017 at 2:25 pm

The average is low. That the average African has an IQ of 85 doesn’t make it not-low.

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jic
on October 22, 2017 at 12:09 am

I don’t know if that statistic is true, but the normal IQ range is usually given as 85-115, so an IQ of 85 is the low end of normal, and an IQ of, say, 110, would be at the moderate-to-high side of normal. Similarly, if we accept that the normal range of beer strength is 3.5-5.5% ABV, then 5% is at the moderate-to-high side of normal, and therefore not low.

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everlastingphelps
on October 22, 2017 at 1:34 am

You continue to miss the point. You started this all out with “5% isn’t a low ABV.” Here is a pile of cicerones, actual, professional beer experts, on their favorite low ABV beers.

Almost of all of them are above 4%, and two are 5-6%. Why? Because 5% is low abv. ABV isn’t a bell curve, it’s a right-skewed distribution. It’s low end is around 2%, and below that beer isn’t even considered beer (it becomes small beer or tonic.) The high end is around 15%, because above 15% yeast usually die. (There are gimmicks like ice removal that let you push things up into the 30-40% abv range.) The left tail is very, very short and the right tail is very, very long.

That makes 5% a low abv.

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jic
on October 22, 2017 at 10:25 am

“ABV isn’t a bell curve, it’s a right-skewed distribution.”

You yourself said “The vast majority of beers are low abv [by your definition, below 6%]”. So yes, ABVs of above 6% significantly outnumber those below 3%, but both tails are vastly, vastly outnumbered by those in the 3.5-5.5% range. Therefore, right-skew or not, 5% is still in the normal range, and isn’t a low ABV. The fact that you’ve found other people who share your mistaken belief doesn’t stop it being mistaken.

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everlastingphelps
on October 22, 2017 at 3:23 pm

Cicerones aren’t “other people.” Cicerones are actual beer experts.

Your argument is exactly the same as reacting to 30 different Form 7 Manufacturers calling .223 low power as “Well I still think that an AR-15 is a high power rifle.”

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jic
on October 22, 2017 at 5:12 pm

Not all expert opinion is of equal validity. The assertion that 5% is a low ABV simply doesn’t reflect reality.

When it comes to food safety, there’s nothing wrong with rare or even blue rare steaks. Cows don’t grow bacteria in their muscle (poultry can have salmonella in the muscle itself and pork may – MAY – have trichinosis), so any pathogen has to come from the surface, which gets sterilized with any kind of cooking.

Also, whoever you found that proclaimed rare steak to be perfect is full of it. It may have more of the original moisture remaining, but it’s locked up in the muscle fibers themselves and unavailable for actual juiciness. It also doesn’t fully render the intramuscular fat so all of the flavor isn’t available. Medium-rare to medium damages the muscle fibers enough to get them to release their moisture into the general matrix without causing them to tighten up so much that they squeeze all the moisture out. It also renders most of the intramuscular fat which contributes both to flavor and juiciness. Sure, everyone may have their own preferences, but mine are proven right by SCIENCE!. 😉

My grandfather only ate well-done while my grandmother preferred rare. When he died I had a steak in his honor and posted it to Facebook. My aunt asked if that was “well-done meat”, I replied that love only goes so far.

This is why I order different steaks differently. A ribeye needs more cooking to mix the fat and get the best flavor. So I order that medium rare. A filet has so little fat that more cooking just dries it out, in my opinion. So I order that one rare. I was raised to eat steak the same way the president does (my mom is 70), and thankfully was introduced to other ways by my (also 70-year-old) father.

It could be a social media thing too. Med-rare and rare photograph better, 🙂

I should also note that I often order one way or another depending on the restaurant. There’s one restaurant where I always order medium-rare, and another where I always order medium, or even on occasion, medium-well.

I don’t know if it’s the grill that’s different, or the chef’s styling of cooking, the meat, or what. Only that some steaks taste better certain ways at different places. No idea why, really.

Maybe the rise in snobbishness and signaling is coupled to the fall of actual meaningful accomplishments. Few people today are doing anything truly meaningful in their works lives, and God knows they aren’t raising families. If you don’t have something real to feel proud of, well, at least signaling lets you be proud of not being one of the Great Unwashed. In your mind, at least.

“Maybe the rise in snobbishness and signaling is coupled to the fall of actual meaningful accomplishments. Few people today are doing anything truly meaningful in their works lives, and God knows they aren’t raising families. If you don’t have something real to feel proud of, well, at least signaling lets you be proud of not being one of the Great Unwashed. In your mind, at least.”

Good insight. I think Dystopic covered something like this in one of his posts regarding SJW’s being intellectual posers. If someone is living in their parents basement, distressed that their life is going nowhere, they are reliably going to look for a purpose or a cause to get behind. I think this demographic is especially vulnerable to being drawn towards the pointless and juvenile white knighting that makes many of us scratch our heads.

Mad cow is a prion related disease, and though not well versed on the nuances, prions cannot be destroyed by cooking. In fact, prions have survived the sterilization process in an autoclave. So much for the butcher who cuts up deer infected with wasting disease prion also] then cleaning his butcher equipment and resuming the meat cutting on beef and pork etc. Who is kidding who?

The heat of a well done steak will cause any oil-solvent poisons to hit their smoke point and be rendered inert, along with most water-based poisons as well. Since Trump doesn’t drink alcohol, he would be able to instantly taste most alcohol-solvent poisons.

There were wine snobs in Jesus’ time. When He turned the water into wine at the wedding in Cana, the snobs couldn’t resist comparing it to the stuff served earlier, declaring that the host saved the best wine for the last.

“Thankfully, I can’t tell the difference between a ‘good’ wine and a ‘bad’ one. Used to drink 2 buck Chuck, currently drink Quail Oak ~3.50 a bottle. Works for me.”

You’re lucky if you can’t. Back in my frugal days, I would grab a $2 bottle of wine–I think it was called Deer Valley–and it was awful. For that price, you’re not buying a bottle of wine, you’re buying a bottle of rancid headache. The lowest I’ll go now is the Barefoot for about $5, and there are plenty at places like Walmart in the $7 range as well.

I wasn’t too fond of the boxed wine either, because even though it was economical it sure got tasteless after the first pour and spending a day in the fridge.

If you want to enjoy a perfect medium rare steak with complete food safety, cook it sous vide at 131 F for at least its minimum pasteurization time (usually about 2 hours). Sous vide circulators are cheap now (under $200). I have the Sansaire and it is not quite as precise as my much more expensive machine, but I have noticed no difference in results. Once you start cooking sous vide, you will stop ordering steak when dining out because you can do better and do it reliably. Sous vide is awesome for other meats too because you can safely cook at the minimum pasteurization temperature instead of following the “better safe than sorry” FDA guidelines. Pork chops are notoriously hard to do safely without overcooking, but we get them right every time at 146 F.

I should have mentioned that there are thousands of sites now devoted to sous vide charts, recipes and tips. Chicken and fish are amazing too when cooked sous vide, as are broccoli and many other veggies. We’ve been experimenting with eggs lately–they are tricky because they require exact timings. But we’ve had some great results. Pro tip–use AA grade eggs for more consistent results.

I go old school when cooking. I prefer cast iron. For drier or leaner meats I use bacon grease or lard. Cook in an oven for an hour, usually at 350F. Tender and juicy. I usually don’t season since the lard seems to enhance the natural flavor. Your fattier meats only need enough extra grease to keep it from sticking until the natural grease starts to render.

easyopinions.blogspot.com/2008/09/strong-preferences.html
Strong Preferences
Quip: If I could tell the difference, I wouldn’t be so picky

I witnessed a marketing experiment in college. Some business students visited my dorm.

They asked for a smoker to volunteer. He would name the cigarette brand that he liked best and the brand he hated, if he had a strong preference. They would find the brands in their bag and conduct a blind taste test. They offered $10 if the subject could tell his favorite brand from his hated brand.

A guy volunteered, saying that he loved X and absolutely hated Y. So, they blindfolded him and selected two cigarettes from each brand. The subject took a few puffs from each and the testers kept track, asking that he say which of the two brands he was smoking.

I would not have believed it, but I witnessed it. The subject couldn’t tell the difference. He didn’t want to accept that he couldn’t tell the difference. I watched the experiment along with everyone else, and it was fair.

A discussion followed. The business students were doing a project for their class in marketing. They said the experiment wasn’t a sure thing, but that 90% of people with a strong brand preference for cigarettes couldn’t tell the difference.

Further, people who had no strong preference, who smoked anything, usually could distinguish and even name particular brands while blindfolded.

A possible explanation. People who can’t tell the difference choose a favorite brand that has a good marketing image. They are afraid of smoking a brand which others don’t like, and they don’t care much themselves. People who can taste differences usually enjoy the differences and are less afraid of justifying why they prefer some brands to others.